GNU TeXmacs: Privilege escalation — GLSA 201401-27

A vulnerability in GNU TeXmacs could result in privilege escalation.

Affected packages

app-office/texmacs on all architectures
Affected versions < 1.0.7.2-r1
Unaffected versions >= 1.0.7.2-r1

Background

GNU TeXmacs is a free WYSIWYG editing platform with special features for scientists.

Description

The texmacs and tm_mupad_help scripts in TeXmacs place a zero-length directory name in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which might result in the current working directory (.) to be included when searching for dynamically linked libraries.

Impact

A local attacker could gain escalated privileges via a specially crafted shared library.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All GNU TeXmacs users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-office/texmacs-1.0.7.2-r1"
 

NOTE: This is a legacy GLSA. Updates for all affected architectures are available since April 02, 2011. It is likely that your system is already no longer affected by this issue.

References

Release date
January 26, 2014

Latest revision
January 26, 2014: 2

Severity
high

Exploitable
local

Bugzilla entries